Friday, June 19, 2015

Keeping Things in Perspective

After the massacre in Charleston, the South Carolina state capitol flew the national and state flags at half staff but saw no particular reason to do the same for the flag they’re proudest of:

Update: MoveOn.org has created a petition asking South Carolina to retire the Confederate flag.

Still later PS: After posting the message above, I ran across an article explaining that, to many people in South Carolina (also Georgia, Mississippi, etc.) the Confederate flag is a symbol of “Southern pride”. This got me to thinking about what symbols of Southern achievement they could use instead, and right off the top of my head I came up with:
• drinking gourd (Harriet Tubman)
• peanuts (George Washington Carver)
• saxophone (Preservation Hall Jazz Band)
• trumpet (Louis Armstrong)
• Olympic Gold Medal (Muhammad Ali)
• Nobel Peace Prize (Martin Luther King Jr.)